Guild Wars 2

oZii.2864:

The op is complaining that his toughness isn’t enough the op thinks 2.6k armor is enough.

It’s the amount of armor you can expect from going full Soldier’s, Knight’s will get you more armor, but with the reduced Vitality you’ll be more vulnerable to burst. The difference between Soldier’s and Knight’s in damage reduction is about …. 12%

I am not defending the OP, but claiming that 2600 armor is not enough, or that it “isn’t a lot”, is absurd.

Waffler.1257:

frans.8092:

Lightsbane.9012:

Dual.8953:

Stealth condi-bombs. Good lord

p/d? already exists.

Condi – bomb? P/D – you’re joking, right? If that is considered a ‘Condi Bomb’ then I understand what the ‘nerf-condition-QQ’ really is …

I can condi burst people down much faster on my p/d thief than I can on my necro (and I’ve played my necro far more than my thief), and at the same time you have near immortality with on demand invisibility/insane regen/condi removal. Only reason to play a condi necro over a thief is for epidemic.

Putting burst and condi-p/d in one sentence is funny. If condi-necro is even slower then condi-p/d, then putting condi-necro and burst in one sentence is even funnier.

Cufufalating.8479:

Looks like that “fight” lastest a good 2-3 seconds based on how many attacks he got it.. If you didnt defend yourself in that time that really your fault not ANets.

Possibly more, notice how the dagger chain was reset before Lotus Strike. Also the final stroke was the C&D that put him in the stealth to stomp, that is at least 3 seconds of revealed since the backstab

messiah.1908:

@frans – you use cnd than sneak than swap to chill followed by dodge on him
if you use swap from stealth you’ll be revealed as you mention

It’s just … mistakes are easily made – but I’ve probably build a bad swapping habit when using the poison sigil with dual P/D’s. I’ve been eying the chill sigil, used just before C&D or the #3 it could help, but I didn’t want to give up the poison for it (poison on steal isn’t quite enough).

Garrisyl.7402:

….IMO such game-changing things should be on the patch notes.

On purpose, for the good feeling you get from making pleasant discoveries.

I’ve thought about the hydro sigil but was weary of it because of the damage portion revealing you when in stealth. And the poision on swap sigil seemed more useful, especially with the weakness trait. But you can have both sigils since the patch.

Healing power is not a good stat for thieves , every other stat will help more unless you are engaged in long fights without ever going out-of-combat.

Healing power works a bit like vitality except vitality is used x10 and healing, at around x1, depending on the healing skill used. Vitality defines your initial health-pool, it’s like a big, upfront heal – about twice the size of regular heal. Healing skills heal of a large amount of health, independent of any stat, plus an amount that is based on Healing Power, scaled with a factor of ~1. Roughly estimating, you’ll need fights lasting for at least two heals before Vitality starts to loose significance when compared to Toughness and a heal or 10 before Healing Power becomes a factor compared to Vitality.

At that point you may want to look at Celestial rather then Apothecary, because now Celestial boosts a lot of your relevant stats, Toughness, Healing Power and Vitality for bunkering, but also Condition Damage, Power and Precision – and yes even Ferocity. Imo, for a bunker, Celestial is a better choice then Apothecary.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Okay, tell me the steps needed for a thief to reset a fight,…

Get far away from their opponent(s) – far enough to go out-of-combat and regenerate health. Then wait for utilities to come off cool-down. Works like that for everyone, I thought this would be common knowledge by now.

I would like it if you could also load a build you have previously saved

Terrahero.9358:

frans.8092:

Lightsbane.9012:

Dual.8953:

Stealth condi-bombs. Good lord

p/d? already exists.

Condi – bomb? P/D – you’re joking, right? If that is considered a ‘Condi Bomb’ then I understand what the ‘nerf-condition-QQ’ really is …

There is a build that employs venom sharing with the minions from Thieves Guild that is absolutely worth the title “Condition Bomb”.

Yeah, I know, but Thieves Guild is on a 180 second cooldown, the lack of utilities makes it quite a bit more vulnerable then your standard Condi-P/D and a fair share of it’s punishment is from the stacked (3 attackers, up to 42 × 350) Life Leech. Few venoms carry a DoT, I think poison and torment – and bleeds from Sneak Attack – but yeah, it can be quite bursty. Oh, and its damage is not related to stealth, or being run on P/D, you might as well run it from P/P.

Shockwave.1230:

frans.8092:

Chicago Jack.5647:

frans.8092:

Runes and sigils do not make a then horrible build top tier now.

Actually it does. Ele was virtually unplayable before the patch. Now, particularly because of the buff to strength runes, D/D ele is seen being played. Denshee plays it in their EU team comp. Top players have said that the strength runes are what was needed to give the D/D ele the “oomph” it needed. It allows the ele to do what it’s best at – an all-rounder class that focuses on consistent damage. This was the role it had before warriors got buffed. A time where everyone complained about eles being an unkillable destruction force.

Now though, they can be better compared to the engie. The engie is similar, but focuses on condition damage.

Ironically, it’s also very good on S/D thieves which preform the same damage-type (consistent damage), but S/D thieves play a different role for the team.

True, but he’s not using Strength. I don’t see much might in his build so I am not sure how it would help his build. S/D doesn’t get a lot of might so Strength doesn’t appear to help it much. Unless it’s duration bonus is applied to stolen Might as well.

Only 1 stack of might is necessary to make strength runes more useful than almost every other direct damage runeset. I have no clue if the might duration works on stolen might, I’d guess it does, but it doesn’t really matter when the profs that do might stacking are getting each stack of might for 30+ seconds from battle and blast finishers.

Fury oriented runes maybe, Scholar still? Anyway, the +7% don’t turn any ‘horrible’ S/D into a top-tier when the better damage builds profit the same way and become even better. And, it wasn’t like there were no similar +damage runes before the patch.

Between the zerker amulet and strength runes alone with a 50% fury uptime from TotC, prior to taking might stacks you’re looking at around a 15% increase in damage overall from what the OP was saying the build would be capable of a year ago.

The only thing that changed in that list was Ferocity and the runes – and only the amulet change would benefit the build more then other builds. The Stength runes, the fury, they all would benefit all direct damage builds, before and after, and not exclusively this S/D build

When also taking into account sigil of air,

Does the same for all builds with decent critical hit, but the x/6/x/x/x builds benefit more from it actually.

… which procs every 3-4 seconds

It doesn’t actually, despite the cooldown being stated as 3 second, it look to be closer to 5s. Sometimes testing stuff > tooltips & wiki

I’ve seen other people pointing out that the build lacked damage, and sizer just happens to be the notable person that took advantage of the power creep ..

All power builds benefit, thus better builds become even better. Or maybe that ‘bad’ build wasn’t all that bad.

Lightsbane.9012:

Dual.8953:

Stealth condi-bombs. Good lord

p/d? already exists.

Condi – bomb? P/D – you’re joking, right? If that is considered a ‘Condi Bomb’ then I understand what the ‘nerf-condition-QQ’ really is …

In the open field, stand apart, such that it is obvious you are watching and watch. Same for towers.

Pug vs Pug? Watch the map and observe your camps, alert people when a camp is attacked, people will usually come and join. Small groups form naturally. Fair and even settings not really are the goal, the goal is to take camps and keeps from the others servers and prevent them from taking yours.

tigirius.9014:

Automated Response, Cleaning Formula 409 …
[/quote]

Neither Automated Response, nor Cleaning Formula 409 automatically take off any conditions on an interval system. Cleaning Formula 409 takes them off of you only when you give up all other skills to use all Elixirs manually (Or 1 time when you actually lose enough hitpoints for Hidden Flask to go off 1 time) and Automated Response only resets the cooldowns of said skills and don’t get me started on the uselessness of medkit even with traits compared to other classes.[/quote]They help you deal with conditions, don’t they? It doesn’t matter if it’s use is artificially confined to ‘automatic’, by that token, many other traited condition removals are not ‘automatic’ – it doesn’t mean they can’t be effective.

And duration reduction is very close to automatic removal, at least it applies to every condition, many traits for removal have a 10 second cooldown and remove one condition.

Those are automatic heals automatic means one doesn’t have to press any buttons IE the imbalance.

On the other hand, they don’t get to choose the moment, it removes a condition and then it goes on cooldown, it could remove a bleed while you’d perhaps rather use it to remove poison before your heal.

Chicago Jack.5647:

frans.8092:

Runes and sigils do not make a then horrible build top tier now.

Actually it does. Ele was virtually unplayable before the patch. Now, particularly because of the buff to strength runes, D/D ele is seen being played. Denshee plays it in their EU team comp. Top players have said that the strength runes are what was needed to give the D/D ele the “oomph” it needed. It allows the ele to do what it’s best at – an all-rounder class that focuses on consistent damage. This was the role it had before warriors got buffed. A time where everyone complained about eles being an unkillable destruction force.

Now though, they can be better compared to the engie. The engie is similar, but focuses on condition damage.

Ironically, it’s also very good on S/D thieves which preform the same damage-type (consistent damage), but S/D thieves play a different role for the team.

True, but he’s not using Strength. I don’t see much might in his build so I am not sure how it would help his build. S/D doesn’t get a lot of might so Strength doesn’t appear to help it much. Unless it’s duration bonus is applied to stolen Might as well.

scabrous.7835:

Since you are nitpicky, let me be to nitpicky as well.

You already were, I don’t care. You’re not man enough to see when you are wrong no amount of arguing is going to change that, or yourself.

Critdamage only applies when you crit, so the buff to the spec is not the full difference in critdamage boost on the amulet.

Runes and sigils do not make a then horrible build top tier now. Your judgment was wrong, it’s that simple, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with being wrong, unless you start defending it like you do. You also wouldn’t miss to jump on the guy like the rest of the pack, do you. Did you ever have the guts to put a build-concept up for critique?

Naqaj.6219:

… you could always designate some areas in the game as duel arenas …

GW 1 used to have those, for a while at least, I don’t recall why they where removed.

I personally don’t want open world dueling, I don’t want to be ‘harassed’ with duel requests.

Why would it be an exploit?

Would 2 venomsharing thieves do this 4x faster, and 3 thieves 9x? You don’t need Quick Recovery as all damage is coming from leeching. And what about Thieves Guild with Venomshare, rather then basilisk?

Lishtenbird.2814:

Tao.5096:

I kind of don’t want Commanders to pop up in the middle of my screen spamming some bs.

Spam bots already are spam buying gw2 keys and spamming everyone daily. 100g wouldn’t be an issue for them. I doubt anyone would want to see a gold selling spam in the middle of his screen on almost every map.

Okay. Then could you please refrain from staying in any maps with any commander tags from now on? ‘Cause we paid 100g for the convenience of organising world events for people who don’t have “extra” 100g, and not for the sake of people who don’t even care to read some “bs” like “STOP DPS, wait for other bosses!”. So obviously if you don’t need that service and are instead opposing it, you shouldn’t benefit from it as well.

Thanks!

He wasn’t talking about you, or other commanders trying to organize an event, he was saying that commander tags being able to bypass spam suppression would soon be abused by gold sellers to bypass the system.

I sometimes have to drag them on top, within the inventory bag. Do they stack in the collections? Can you move the collection stack to your bank character inventory and then use the deposit collectibles to move the non-stacking stuff to the bank?

Miroe.2054:

buy GW1 and make yourself a char that is both, Mesmer AND Warrior —> Problem solved

Lol, yeah, but buying the gems for an extra slot would actually be cheaper

DeceiverX.8361:

And I thought people whining about backstab was bad (the same thing applies), but now people are complaining about the effectiveness of condi shortbow rangers?…

They’ll always find something new to complain about. At some point they’ll get to complaining about skritt bottles.

Shockwave.1230:

frans.8092:

scabrous.7835:

Was it horrible and not viable back then? – Yes.
Is it good now? – Yes.

Game didn’t change that much. meaning your earlier qualification as ‘horrible’ was not quite accurate.

Just a quick summary of some of the changes people have mentioned for fyi purposes:

• Non-ferocity builds have 10% more crit damage when using berserker’s amulet since the april patch (this is free damage for s/d acro that it previously didn’t have)
• Strength runes (provide 3+ might stacks as a fight progresses on, and perma 7% damage buff). Strength runes also make might more readily available for stealing.
• Cleave wasn’t quite as strong in the meta, so the higher damage thief builds stood out more.
• Sigil changes add more damage overall to all builds (this impacts s/d acro)

Crit damage bonus only triggers on critical hits, +10% crit damage is no more then 4-5% damage – especially without the 300 precision. Not a big deal. 3 might stacks is only 100 power and +7% is nice but the runes are available to everyone and they do not change the relative strength of builds much, although in combination with Sterngth Sigils they’d favor high crit chance (Critical Strikes) more. Sigil +damage affects all builds.

It may have improved with the patch, but a horrible vs. good qualification change is not due to the ferocity patch, but an earlier mis-judgment. Which is no big deal, but the denial is plain silly.

You can’t stealth with Blinding Powder after being knocked out of SR because leaving SR will debuff you with revealed, you’re probably better of using BP at the start of your escape because, without seeing your retreat, it will take them more time to find your SR.

MatyrGustav.6210:

… Its just a hope and a Dream the thief didnt move after he turned invise. All you did was blow your cooldowns, and made yourself an easier target. New Thieves are the only ones who get caught, since they dont realize they have to move after invise.

Off course they move, even new thieves move while in stealth (unless they believe moving breaks stealth or something). But you should stop believing that you can not know where they are when you can not see them, you should start thinking about where they’d want to go while in stealth and act accordingly. Don’t just spam skills and blow cooldowns, you can even use your movement, skills and abilities to influence where they go and take the initiative. Stealth is as strong as you make it.

scabrous.7835:

Was it horrible and not viable back then? – Yes.
Is it good now? – Yes.

Game didn’t change that much. meaning your earlier qualification as ‘horrible’ was not quite accurate.

Fenrina.2954:

Serophous.9085:

(which shouldn’t be too far off since mmo RPGs are based on the DND system)

Mmorpgs trace their roots back to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon). Said roots are old and deep enough that experience with d&d is not applicable to an mmo. I don’t consider it reasonable to say magic in the Lord of the Rings is comparable to Final Fantasy’s magic because they’re both Fantasy. This is not any different.

And MUD implementations frequently used D&D rulesets, so you could say that modern graphical MMORPG mechanics do have their roots in D&D.

But D&D ‘deflection’ (and armor) essentially worked through the chance to hit, or get hit, while Guildwars armor reduces the damage inflicted without affecting any chance to (get) hit.

Yeah, it can hurt actually, when retaliation breaks stealth and gives revealed.

Nate.8146:

… cheap tactics ….

Uhuh, running around in circles pressing 1 1 1 2 3 4 5 1 1 1 1 1 is advanced tactics. Whittling down a champ usually consists of repeating a (relatively) safe procedure over and over and over.

I do miss pre-mega some times, soloing the separatists from Nageling was quite the fun

Rpgdude.9135:

My one complaint is there is no way to solo dungeons, I have to get a group, I hate that. Hench men would be great. One of the the big draws for me in GW1 was the ability to build your on team and beat a dungeon others had to have non-npc groups to get through .

Still, the more memorable moments and missions were with other players …

H&H in GW1 was easy-mode, AI will always follow your lead and never complain so you’ve always got everyone in agreement on the course of action to be followed.

You can’t kill every champion, or maybe even veteran, with every build. Some are trivial, some are actually easier and faster soloed and others require a small army.

tigirius.9014:

My engineer doesn’t have even 1 choice for automatic removal, but people will continue to argue against actual balance and miss the point entirely.

Automated Response, Cleaning Formula 409 …

You can use boldface and italics to emphasize parts of your text

Azhure.1857:

… With the excess of gold in the game – a gold sink or two are welcome.

New players don’t have excess gold.

Nor do I have any trouble with skill points, in fact I have more than I need… WHEN I need them.

Not possible, a few posts back someone added up how much skill points are needed to but all traits and skills. You might be cherry-picking them because you know what you want, but new players do not. Expect to see more and more new players getting crushed in high level area’s.

You don’t need every trait and skill at the moment of your character’s creation. Think about what you will actually use and what you won’t – then go from there.

Players new to the game will not know what traits and skills their characters need. This is Factions all over again, they never learn.

Syrpharon.7491:

… a bad idea because Cantha mixes together chines, japanese and corean cultures, and this is considered bad in Asia.

Didn’t that happen with western cultures? I guess it is ok to mix them all up.

Nobody named a character Girl from Sweden yet?

Famps.7461:

i agree that pistol whip do more damage then death blossom in some way. but death blossom is not usless and it is one of the important skills in condition builds, when you are in melee fights. (for example: you can stack bleeds fast).

The problem with it is that you need a build strong in condition
damage to make it good and while you do that, you make the #1, #2 and #5 of the weaponset a lot weaker.

for me Pistol whip is boring in the same way that death blossom is boring for some people.

Stun interrupts. It is not just about damage

Einlanzer.1627:

You’re being pedantic to distract from the weakness of your argument.

He is not being pedantic, you’re not using realistic numbers. You have to use the coëfficients and run them through the formulas with your actual stat values and other modifiers, the ‘damage’ numbers on the wiki are insufficient.

The base values are more than adequate to judge general performance.

Power scales differently on actual builds, with critical hits and other modifiers mixing in.

Even the point about the 10 second window required for full damage is only partially relevant on account of S/P being a channel skill that does not really outdamage the autoattack.

Well, 10 seconds is a long time in PvE. Power does it’s damage when you hit and when you’ve dealt enough, stuff dies and you know you’re done. With conditions you have to wait for the conditions to do their work before you know it’s been enough, and while it looks cool to turn your back on them and wait for them to die just before they reach you, it’s a bit impractical in the long run.

Create a chat tab for Wvw with only the channels that are of interest, like for instance /map and /squad

Doug.4930:

I invite you all to read this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Proposal-Ban-Thieves-from-WvW

perhaps you will see the joke? We shall see.

Lol, is there a contest or something going on?

Someone make a thread,

Ban Players from Wvw, they kill me whenever I try to take a break near the flagstand.
Signed, A Guard.

Berserker probably, when needed for survival replace some with Soldiers, or Valkyre, or Knights (anything with Power and Vitality and/or Toughness). Traits, full Critical Strikes, with Side Strikes and Executioner. The rest is free, basically, a touch of Acrobatics is nice, for Feline Grace and many of it’s major adept traits are good, Trickery is fun for the steal buffs (though more useful in PvP), Shadow Arts for condi removal or cloaked (blind is strong in pve), Deadly Arts for Mug (combined with full trickery for an empowered steal). You can play around and change and experiment, most of it will work just fine with Power gear.

People got used to AI moving out of AoE in Guildwars 1, they would get used to it in Guildwars 2. Can give mobs different AI, vor variation. Besides, I’d like to see some big svanir champ dodge around, or a pinesoul. And we had lots of fun with that big ol’ abomination chasing around players just outside Caer Shadowfain

NinjaEd.3946:

I don’t agree with Kharr but the fact that we have a 5% direct damage sigil bonus kinda speaks for itself that power needs some bonuses to do anything worth mentioning.

There’s a +6% condition damage sigil, that suggests condition damage needs +6% where power damage can do with +5% …

MithranArkanere.8957:

We really need autobalance measures.

….
- Short condition immunity on condition removal. A skill removes bleed, you get 1-2 second bleed immunity. …

Also applies invulnerability after healing?

Yeah, stealth – backstab. Kills them fast. Real fast.
Try all sets, /P can help when overwhelmed, Shortbow is nice for clearing up trash and moving fast, S/P for everything that likes to come in packs and isn’t immune to blind. D/P is kinda boring in pve, P/D is slow but nearly immortal.

Ah, ok, that poison. They could use Shadow’s Embrace, would make sense on a stealth user.

Amaterasu.6280:

frans.8092:

Amaterasu.6280:

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves.

What does s/d have to do with shortbow #3?

I’m sorry, but have you fought a s/d thief and tried to burst one down?

Yes and no. What does S/D have to do with Disabling Shot?

The ability to chain evades through SB 3 and dodges for a long period of time is the reason why acro thieves are considered broken. It made it impossible to lock them down.

It is the only defense available with Shortbow.

Now add the pre-nerf SB 3 to that…it’s hard to argue that it isn’t OP and overall just promotes low level gameplay.

Evasion and dodging is the only defense on the Shortbow. And since when is being able to be locked down a measure for balance? If anything, locking down any player should never be possible.

Have you actually tried this new shuffle? Have you seen how the change is described in the update notes? It says: “Fixed an issue that caused the player to stop moving momentarily when using this skill on opponents behind the thief”. It fixed an issue with movement? This isn’t fixing, or balancing, it must be a mistake.

Crovax.7854:

frans.8092:

What poison? Sword doesn’t have poison by itself, main-hand Dagger has.

shortbow has. when engaging another thief it’s best to start with sb #4 and some autoattacks before switching and going melee.

Sorry, my post was in reaction to one by hihey, I have edited it.

hihey.1075:

Reikou.7068:

Amaterasu.6280:

condi engis, properly played warriors, s/d eles, s/p thieves.

A lot of things CAN beat s/d thieves if played properly…fighting s/d is much more about timing / anticipation than anything. If you can play a good s/d, you can probably know how to counter one.

I’d say those are 5-5 matchups at best/worst.

Nothing really hardcounters (2-8 or 1-9 matchups) the AcroTrick S/D thief atm.

This. I think old Dhuumfire necro would get a 7-3 though, as one burn proc would pressure the thief long enough to Condi spike him while he uses Shadow Return to cleanse.
But with the current meta, no builds can secure a kill on a SD thief. Even other thief builds (DP) get countered slightly by SD, as they don’t have any way to cleanse the poison

What poison? Sword doesn’t have poison by itself, main-hand Dagger has.

Edit: Added quote from the post intended my question for

Amaterasu.6280:

Having a huge amount of dodges/evades is THE biggest problem with thieves, particularly s/d thieves.

What does s/d have to do with shortbow #3?

Thieves have similar dodge/evade mechanisms as other classes while lacking the blocking and protection. Some other classes have free evades on their #1, while thieves’ weapon based evades always cost initiative.

Lamuness.3570:

Ghostwolf.9863:

Thief is the opposite of necro in terms of strength and weaknesses.

Clearly a lie because I’m sure a thief necro’d this thread.

The thief stated he has not thieved in a while, maybe he’s practicing a new profession?

babazhook.6805:

The +7 percent damage needs only one stack of might to work. one stack of might is easy to get.

Yes, it is and it’s one of the easiest conditions to meet, especially for +7% damage.

I can build 14 stacks of might with just a sigil of strength and NO OTHER sources using this rune in a p/p set. This number is way harder to achieve without that extra duration. I had bought two sets prior to the changes.

That would, even with 2 procs from the #4, require hitting a critical almost as soon as the sigil comes of cooldown ends, and thus a critical chance close to a 100% , which in itself is not trivial to achieve.

You also have to consider having both. A person using Strength runes is not precluded from fury and can get it at the same rate as one using runes with a source of Fury. The opposite also true but then it becomes a much more nuanced issue as which is easier to obtain and what must be sacrificed to get it.

And you can get Might with Fury (and Fury runes). The reference is to the Fury runes, whose #4 proc is relatively more powerful, combined with either Furious Retaliation or the Bountiful trait you could easily get see a 100% fury uptime.

Carrying Runes of Strength determines a lot of your build choices, you will want to get a high crit chance to proc Sigil of Strength, and either 25 SA or 10 Acro (and maybe the endurance food), or both – to get the most out of it. You’ll probably not be running Hidden Killer with Valkyre gear, while a Rune of Rage fury oriented build would want Ferocity along with Power and some Precision.